Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, great to have you company today. I hope you’ve been enjoying a wonderful week.
Today’s guest is a guitarist who’s played with English band Roxy Music since 1972. He’s produced albums and tracks for Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, for Rod Stewart, as well as for New Zealand’s Split Enz. Now Phil Manzanera has a new solo album out with Crowded House’s Tim Finn, and he joins me to talk about how he and his friend collaborated on it.
Phil also chats about his time in Roxy Music and what the 50th anniversary tour was really like. Hello! Hello Phil Manzanera, lovely to meet you. How are you? Lovely to meet you Sandy, how are you doing? Terrific, thanks so much for joining me.
Thank you. There’s so much to talk to you about. Maybe we start with the latest stuff and work our way backwards.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. You’ve got a brand new album called The Ghost of Santiago that you’ve done with your buddy Tim Finn, who of course is very well known to us from Crowded House. Absolutely, and of course Split Enz.
And Split Enz, yes, of course. We go back a long way to 1975 when the first Roxy tour of Australia, and I met him and the rest of the guys at the Horton Pavilion when they were the supporter for us in Sydney. But yeah, The Ghost of Santiago, this is the second album of a batch of songs that we started when lockdown happened really.
Tim sent me an email from Auckland and said, have you got any beats or any Latin groups, especially slow Latin groups. He was in that kind of strange mood. So I said, sure, you’ve come to the right place.
I started sending him stuff. And then when I ran out of Latin stuff, I just looked in my computer and just found anything that I had lying around. And I would send it to him and he would literally send it back within 24 hours with singing on it and with words sometimes.
And I just thought, this is impossible. How is he doing it? He must have been storing up stuff. He must have a book somewhere full of lyrics and his works on all the time.
He’s a pilgrim Now he’s a shadow On a wall In a plaza Dead or torn up Dreams will thrive Dreams will thrive As long as human love survives Hope is alive Hope is alive In Santiago Beneath the plaza stairway There burns a secret passage Connecting the cathedral With the convent of Sao Paulo I have worked this way all my life, really, because with Roxy, it was always do the music first and then Brian would try and write a top line to it and some words. And I don’t think Tim was really used to that. He’s a proper songwriter where he will sit with a guitar or piano and hum a melody and then craft it up just like you see Paul McCartney do.
That’s a unique kind of person. I was never like that and Roxy was never like that. So I think he quite enjoyed this new challenge.
He’d say, no, I want to just write to whatever you send me as a sort of discipline. An exercise, yeah. Yeah, very different, interesting process.
But all the music out of the 25 tracks that we ended up writing are virtually completely different. But what unifies it all is Tim’s wonderful voice and his storytelling that he gets into. And, you know, The Ghost of Santiago, the actual track, is a classic sort of Tim profane sort of story about a priest who’s trying to elope with a nun, falls in love with a nun and tries to elope with her, but she doesn’t turn up at the meeting place and it’s set in Santiago.
In his mind, he was setting it in Santiago de Chile. Yeah. And in my mind, I was setting it in Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Santiago and Tim has never been there, but I have been there. Yeah, I played there with David Gilmour when I was on tour with David Gilmour. We played in a big stadium and it was fantastic.
And the punters, the guys and girls, they’re just such a great audience. They just love… South Americans love rock music. I mean, you know, Argentina and places like that, they just love heavy metal.
It’s totally bizarre. And they love Pink Floyd and they love all that kind of stuff. You know, I was brought up as South American, because I’m expecting everyone to just love salsa or cumbia or tango.
And that’s not the case. I was going to say, you’ve always had a bit of a passion for Latin grooves, haven’t you? Yeah, well, because that’s how I started, you know, in Cuba, with my mum teaching me. My mum was Colombian, from Barranquilla in Colombia.
My father was British. But she started having guitar lessons when I was about six. Wow.
And to get rid of this annoying little brat that was me, she said, look, I’m just going to have to teach you to play something, because otherwise it’s going to drive me mad with all this plucking the strings and things. So that’s how I started with, you know, Latin American songs and things like that. So it’s way before rock and roll for me.
Right. You founded your first band in about 1966, is that right? Well, hardly. You know, a school band.
You know, when you’re at school, you want to get together with your chums and make music. You know, and I begged my parents to send me to England when I was nine from Venezuela, because I wanted, A, I wanted to, you know, I was virtually an only child because my brother and sister lived in, well, they went to boarding school in England. So I wanted to be with other people, you know, with other… Kids.
Siblings and things, you know. So I said, send me to boarding school in England. And also the music is incredible.
So I arrived. Can you imagine? I arrived in September 1960, the beginning of the 60s in England, and all the music that came out just drove me wild. You know, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Hendrix.
So at school, we all wanted to be like, we all wanted to be like our heroes. Let’s form a band. Surely you can learn to play two chords, you know.
Is that all it took? It, well, yeah, it was pretty pathetic what we used to play. But we tried. You thought you were cool.
Yeah. Yeah, we were cool. And then gradually as it got older, the musicians I found at the school were great, actually.
And I mean, one of them has ended up being Peter Gable’s guitarist for the last 40 years. Going up and down, all around the bend. You could have a fun car, or make amusement in the rain.
I wanna be a French haver. I wanna be a French haver. Morning.
Those school boy charms turned out to be actually lifelong musical charms. Yeah, serendipitous. But, you know, meeting Tim and Neil when he was quite young, when they sent him to England in 1975 to join Split Ends, it’s great.
It’s like having more charms, you know. And here I am still. I mean, David Gilmore, I’ve known since I was 16.
He lives next door. You know, I speak with Tim all the time. I saw Neil play at Hampton Court Palace.
It’s just the same charms, if you like. It’s very nice, you know, just to have friends who you like, who happen to be great musicians. Yeah, I can imagine.
And they get to work with also. It’s awesome. Yeah, you get to work with them.
But, you know, me and Tim, I just sent stuff backwards and forwards. And really, for the first 18 months, we didn’t even think of something like Zoom. Because we had no idea how to do Zoom.
But then, you know, obviously all our children told us how to do Zoom. Crikey, I haven’t actually seen you. We’ve been doing all this music and I haven’t actually seen you at all.
So then we went on Zoom and had like long chats, which I filmed actually, which are up on my… I saw those, yeah. Yeah, just talking about how we met and just chewing the cud, as they say. And obviously, we won’t be doing that again.
But we have had our sort of grumpy old men sort of type of hilarious discussions. So you’re happy with this new album? I’m very happy with this new album and I’ll tell you why. Because it provides a choice for people.
You know, when I listen, and I listen to everything, you know, and I’m up with everything that’s going on. Young artists and rap and hip-hop and stuff like that. And I think what we have on our drums is something very different.
So, you know, if anyone’s looking for something different, then tap into The Ghost of Santiago because it’s a sort of an album in the old-fashioned way. It’s not trying to have a hit single or… We brought it out ourselves on my own label. There’s no big company behind it.
It’s just a couple of guys saying, let’s do some stuff. And then, because of the digital age, I know how to put the stuff out Is there a favourite track? Well, I know Tim’s favourite track is Our Love. But I quite like the first one, Space Cannibal, because when I did the music to send to Tim, I thought, wow, I’ve never heard anything like this before, this strange track.
And I thought, he’ll never be able to sing over the top of this. And, of course, he came back with this track called Space Cannibal, which is sort of an environmental type song, really, about the sun gobbling up everything, being a space cannibal. And I thought, wow.
It sounds like you liked everything he did and he liked everything you did. Like, the perfect match. Well, it was.
And I think, you know, we’ve done these 25, and that’s probably it. You know, we won’t want to push our luck, you know, because it’s worked. And we’re both happy.
And at the end of the day, you know, this is the 50th year of me being in a professional musician. And actually, I think, I think it probably is for Tim, telling the truth. And when you’ve been in it for a long time, you just want to be happy.
You know, you just want to do some good work that you’re happy with. And you just, like, set it off and then, if anyone else likes it, that’s great. Provided you’re happy, you know, it keeps you off the streets.
Before the bear Hunts for a meal The melting ice Needs no more seals And so he turns Upon his cub And garbles him up Talking about 50 years, it’s been a little longer than that since Phil joined one of the most iconic British prog rock bands of the 70s and 80s in Roxy Music. What an incredible run you’ve had with that band. Yes, I joined literally a week before they signed the first management contract.
I saw an ad in The Melody Maker. They were looking for a guitarist and I’d heard about them through a demo tape they’d sent to a journalist. And I went to meet them for an audition.
And I knew that they were a little bit older than me, but I knew they were very special. You know, when you walk into this tiny little house in Battersea in London and there’s Brian Ferry, you know, Andy Mackay and Brian Eno. I thought, these guys are really cool.
You know, I want to join their band. But, you know, I failed the audition. Me too.
I failed the audition. But we got on very well. It’s like, for instance, they got in a guy who had been in a famous band called The Nice called David List.
And that didn’t work out. After a couple of months I got a call and said, would you come try out really? Although they did say come and try out to mix the sound not to play guitar. And when I turned up there happened to be a guitar there.
I said, oh, fancy having a play. So, on my 21st birthday, that’s the 31st of January, 1972, I was looking at the abyss. I had nothing, no gigs.
You know, my friend had joined a professional band. I thought, I’ve got nothing going for me. The next day I had this call to come and meet the guys again.
The day after that they asked me to join. The following week I was playing in a pub in Hammersmith here. The week after that we signed the first management contract.
Four weeks later we were in the studio recording the first album. Eight weeks later the album was released on the same day as Siggy starred us, David Bowie. And we were playing, supporting him at a pub in Croydon.
And then the album was done before. It happened, it was like Christmas every day. Take me for an airplane ride Take me for a six day wonder But don’t you move, don’t you move I’ll fly, I’ll fly, I’ll fly Search me a land with the misty blue With the James and Uncle Pooka We are flying down to New York Virginia Plain was Roxy Music’s first hit in the UK.
Phil improvised his guitar solo during the recording by playing the first thing that came into his head. And with its success Phil’s head really started to spin.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Roxy Music’s popularity exploded with their debut self-titled album in 1972.
The group had been described as merging elements of glam rock and art rock, and although they didn’t know it yet, they’d go on to significantly influence early English punk music by providing a model for the new wave acts to come. We called ourselves inspired amateurs, you know, and we had to really, like, put our skates on to get more professional. So we did, like, loads and loads of gigs, tiny gigs, loads and loads of practice up and get more professional because we were getting bigger and we were on the TV, Top of the Pops, and suddenly the single was number four and everything was happening and we were off, you know, catapulted.
Yeah. Nobody was ready for this success. No, I mean, well, Brian and Andy had been to university and Brian had studied fine art and Andy had done music at Reading University.
Ina had gone to art college and the same teachers who taught him taught Pete Townshend. When we turned up, eventually we got to know David very quite well, and he was amazed that we just appeared out of nowhere because this was, like, his fourth album or Singy Stardust or something. He’d already paid his dues.
Yeah, paid his dues, done hundreds of different kinds of music, and suddenly these buggers turn up fully formed and said, where did they come from? This is ridiculous. So he loved us and he was very nice to us and helped us. So what was it like for you? I mean, I can imagine.
Actually, I can’t imagine. I’m not sure anybody listening could actually imagine the whirlwind that you were caught in. It must have felt like you were in this tumble dryer with a big smile on your face.
It was. I used to say it was like Christmas every day. I mean, if you grow up with the Beatles when you’re nine or ten or whatever and then you dream about being in a band and everything you imagine it might be like, to actually get into a band and then get into that band, it’s like I wonder, I felt so lucky, you know.
I guess it’s serendipity that all those, that collection of people met at that time and produced something that’s gone on and here we are 50 years later. I’ve been outgunned in shades of blue Sometimes you find you’re yearning for the quiet life The country air and all of its joys The fighters couldn’t compensate it twice, the price For just another night with the boys, oh yeah The boys will be boys, we’ll be boys, you’re yours They say love’s a gamble, hard win, easy lose But while such odds you better make pay So if life is your table and faith is the wheel Then let the chips fall where they may In modern times, the modern way When you say that you failed the audition in the first place, what went wrong? Well, I had a terrible cold for a start. I was blowing my nose the whole time.
I played them some of the material of the band I was in before, some prog rock, very funny time signatures and stuff like that. They hated that. But I thought, oh, well, don’t listen to that.
I can do simple, you know, I guess I was pretty nervous as well. It was the first audition I’d actually ever been to and auditions are scary things. Anyway, that’s right.
You said that you instantly recognised that they had something special, each individual and between them. Yeah, just as people. They were not like people I’d met before.
You know, I was only like 18 months out of school and they were five or six years older. Can you imagine when you’re at school and there’s, you’re 13 and there’s 18 year olds? Yeah. They seem like, yeah, like, oh, so growing up, you know.
And they had bank accounts and they had cars and they had things like that. It was like, whoa. Obviously, over time, that age gap narrowed and you didn’t feel like that anymore.
You get on with everybody really well. We’ve had ups and downs like any band or any sort of family, really. After a time, you forget.
If you’ve had an argument with someone about something, then the time passes and you forget. Why did I have an argument? I cannot for the life of me remember. I think I’m annoyed with him, but I can’t remember why.
So let it go, you know. And then you get back together and you start playing music. And especially these songs bring us together.
You know, we look at the songs and say, wow, that would be fun to play that. Because I actually haven’t played that for 10 years. So I’ve got to relearn how to play it, obviously.
You might remember How it used to be Fearing I could show you Any fantasy Particular dangers Now and then 3D No cheap nostalgia Conjuncta Like me Don’t ever expect to hear new music from Roxy Music. As Phil says, there simply isn’t any. There’s eight albums, you see.
Eight albums, right. Eighty songs, OK. And do you have a favourite amongst those? Well, I have a few that I enjoy for different reasons.
Obviously, for me, songs have a different resonance because I remember where we recorded them and events that happened during For instance, there’s a track called In Every Dream You Have A Heart In which is almost like a profane song. It’s about an inflatable dog. This guy who has this relationship.
And this was on the second Roxy album. And, you know, when we played it live in theatres in the UK people would very cheekily buy inflatable doll and then you’d see it coming from the back of the theatre towards the stage being passed over people’s heads. And, you know, it’s meant to be a sort of tense sort of song and you just couldn’t help but just like starting to laugh.
This thing’s coming towards you. And then when it explodes at the end into a big guitar solo it’s like, it was a lot of fun. In every dream home a heartache And every step I take Takes me further from heaven Is there a heaven? I’d like to think so Standards of living They’re rising daily But home, oh sweet home It’s only a saying Roxy Music always struck me as a group of guys who did take themselves very seriously.
Themselves and the music, right? Well, yeah. How wrong could you be, really? I mean, it’s a lot of fun and laughter in doing the Roxy stuff. But I guess, you know, Brian’s image was pretty cool and sort of suave and all that kind of thing.
So I guess that’s where that comes from. There’s quite a few jokers amongst you. Well, it wasn’t Brian.
He always appeared to be very aloof and standoffish and very serious in what he did. And you couldn’t touch him, you couldn’t get near him. He just, he was like, put himself on the mountaintop.
True. Give him a few drinks and the Geordie in him comes out, you know, from northeast. He becomes very funny and quite lively.
Why hasn’t there been anything new from Roxy in a long time? Well, actually, I mean, we did try and do something. We went in the studio with Eno and with Chris Thomas, our original producer. And we laid down some tracks and we started working on them.
And then we just lost the sort of spark, you know, and we thought, it doesn’t really sound better than some of the stuff we did before, so perhaps we’ll just abandon it. And we did. Much to the disappointment of the record company.
I’m sure. But I think it’s a good thing to know when to give it away, isn’t it? Yeah. Pushing the proverbial uphill if it’s not flowing.
Well, yes, and I think there’s certain elements of like, lots of people would say, oh, why don’t you do a new album or something like that? And then if it wasn’t very good, they’d say, oh, that was awful, why did you do that? You know, we are quite expendable to people unless you come up with the goods. And fair enough, you know, there’s historically, if you look at pop music and rock music, it’s quite rare for people to do really good work that compares with their early work. Love is the drug was the lead single from Roxy Music’s fifth album, Siren.
It became Roxy’s highest charting single. We worked together as a band. I’m not sure if there’s a lot left in terms of recording new stuff.
You know, I have played on some of Brian’s new stuff where I don’t know whether it’ll end up or he’ll rub it out. I normally say to him, look, I’ll play whatever you want. If you don’t like it, just rub it out.
I really don’t care. Normally he does rub it out. We’re just all into music.
I mean, every, you know, whether it’s Eno, Brian Ferry, Andy Mackay, Paul Thompson, all doing music these whole 50 years and different kinds of music with different people just enjoying being in music. You’ve spent a lot of time doing your own solo stuff and then of course you’ve worked with Split Enz a lot too. You produced their stuff, didn’t you? Well, I produced what over here was their first album in England, but it was actually called Second Thoughts in Australia and then I did a single called Another Great Divide, I think.
There’s a song I know, I know To where there’s a place I go, I go To where some say get back Where you’re not around Desiring, dividing your time Nothing I can do, it was pretty risky Fifty-fifty, she’d make a problem for me Oh, oh, oh, oh She’s as cold as ice She deep, frozen She’s a saint at work, devil abroad Tell you need to come home somewhere Be wise, if you take my advice Just hot-tail out of there Go right ahead before she tells Some cock-and-bull story about some screwball Pneumonic, psychotic You name it, she’s got it Ooh, Another Great Divide Another Great Divide And I figured out this equation Tim and Neil and even Eddie played on my solo album, K-Scope, and then Tim has played on other, sang on some of my other solo albums as well. So we have continued doing bits and pieces, you know, whenever we happen to be in the same place or it suited, you know. How does the skill of being a great musician translate into becoming a great producer? It doesn’t necessarily.
There’s a little psychology in production. There’s different kinds of producers as well. There’s engineers who become producers.
There’s lots of those. Or there’s the George Martin School of Production. And that’s the kind of thing that I aspire to, which is a person who can stand back, think conceptually, not twiddle all the knobs and the dials, know what it all does, but be able to say, what would happen if we did that? Or what’s this song about? Let’s get to the core of, you know, it’s a more sort of artistic side.
And then be someone there to just say, well, that’s great, but you could do it this other way if you wanted to try it. You know, and that’s my kind of style. It’s not like Phil Spector’s like, we’re going to up the sound.
I can imagine you’d be really affable to work with and it’d just go back and forward between whoever you were working with. The Finn Brothers must have been really pleased to have you on board. And what they put out really set them on their way, didn’t it? Yeah, I mean, they have just an incredible talent.
It must be in their DNA. I’m sure it’s their Irish genes or something. You know, there have been certain special people I’ve worked with like Godley and Cream over the years who are fantastic songwriters and just can do magic.
And the Finn Brothers are the same. Other people are more complicated, but talented in a different way. So for instance, when I produced David Gilmour and helped produce the Pink Floyd album, that’s a totally different kind of thing when you’ve got a great guitarist, and I’m a guitarist, and also a friend, and someone with a beautiful voice like David.
You’ve got to just be another ear. He could do it all himself if he wanted to, but it’s boring and he needs someone to bounce his ideas off. Remember that night White stairs in the moonlight They walked it too Through empty playground This ghost town Children again On rusting swings Getting higher Sharing a dream On an island It felt right And Bounce, David Gilmour did very successfully.
It was the Pink Floyd founder’s third solo album. It was also his first solo album in 22 years and featured Jools Holland, David Crosby and Graham Nash.
This is A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. In his five decades plus career, guitarist Phil Manzanera
has become synonymous with the British rock band Roxy Music since their groundbreaking 1972 debut album. During the periods when the group was either active or on hiatus,
Phil made a name for himself as both a solo artist and a producer collaborator with the likes of Split Ends, Rod Stewart and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.
That’s a whole different world, you know, the sort of Pink Floyd world and touring with them. It’s like money’s no object. You know, you can have the best equipment.
He has a studio on a boat on a 1920s boat that belonged to Charlie Chaplin’s manager parked by Hampton Court Palace on the River Thames.
I mean, I just sit at the… at the back of the boat and look out. So it was just like a dream, you know, because I met him when I was 16. He was a friend of my brother’s to ask him how to become a professional musician.
And he says he can’t remember what he said, but it must have been good because five years later, I got into Roxy. It must have been great advice. I wish he could remember it. We could pass it on. Yeah.
Phil, you’re a man of all shades of music, aren’t you? Your own solo stuff is very different to the Roxy stuff. The Roxy stuff is very different to the Split Enz and Crowded House stuff.
And of course, that is so different to the Pink Floyd stuff as well. Is it that you just like everything? I don’t like everything, but I do have a very large musical palette to draw on
because I like the best of jazz, classical, experimental, avant-garde music, you know, just music. It helps me. It helps my mental health.
It helps. It’s a form of therapy. It’s always been. And I can see how that has a resonance for other people. So that’s why I can jump in.
The other day, I got a call and said, would you come and produce a few tracks for Jools Holland and Rod Stewart? It’s like old fashioned big jazz type thing with a 26 piece orchestra.
I said, I haven’t done anything like that ever before. And he said, for sure. What could possibly go wrong? So I jumped in and it was incredibly enjoyable.
in the dawn phyllis recently added another string to his bow he’s written his memoir it’s called
revolution to roxy revolution spelt the spanish way basically it’s pronounced that way because it
starts really in havana cuba when i was six or seven and it sort of ends pretty much after the
2022 last concert of roxy music at the o2 in london it’s like making sense of where our family came
from which starts in 1492 in spain and then also making sense of the 52 years of music and going
forward so it it’s it’s about me trying to make sense of that what was the impetus for well i think when you get to my age i’m 73 now you you sort of you tend to look back and you think i
wish i’d asked my parents more questions about where we came from what they did when they were there when they were there and and they would say well i’m limite from this because people
don’t and then they sort of regret it later i thought for my children my grandchildren
let’s do a bit of digging and see what comes out and put it down on the page so i had to go and it took me like two months to write the first two chapters and i thought this is never going to
happen and actually i know now that any further books are never going to happen because it’s so
At the end of the day, it took a long time, seven years. Did you end up enjoying it? Well, what happened in the end is that I realised that what I needed was a producer.
I found a guy to help me and my wife as well. And between them, they sort of produced me. So it was painful because I’m not good at a typewriter. It was a team effort, really.
So you’re pretty happy with the finished product? Very happy with the finished product. I know that you have a super interesting story, but you’ve also got a lot of messages. So if they’ve come out in the book,
readers are going to get lots out of it for sure, aren’t they? Well, yeah, I mean, there is the musical side, there’s Roxy, and then right up to doing the albums with Tim and stuff like that. You can get it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
So, Phil, you said that it goes up to when you finished that 50th anniversary tour with Roxy in 2022. Tell me a little bit about that.
You had to relearn the songs because you hadn’t played them for at least a decade. How was that whole experience for you? Well, not only did I have to relearn the songs, but I had to relearn them in different keys.
Because what happens with the majority of singers, obviously, as they get older, their voices change and they can’t sing them in the original keys.
So that was a real head job, actually, trying to work out how to play original Roxy songs in different keys.
Because the reason you write a song in a certain key is because it has the right sound in that key. When you change the key, it changes the whole song.
We spent a lot of time trying to work out how to make it sound like the original. But overall, it was fabulous.
It was a great, great tour.
It was the only time where we’ve been able to play Roxy songs in the correct visual context.
We had an amazing set of screens and things that was new tech. I really felt proud that we were up there. I knew that that was the last time we’d ever tour.
When we finished at the O2, we said, that’s it, we’re done. So thankful that it ended on a good note.
I mean, there will be more Roxy stuff coming out in terms of the tour. We filmed it and we recorded it. There’s a Dolby Atmos version of Avalon coming out and all sorts of box sets and things like that.
But there will be no more touring. Was it a little bittersweet? Well, with the audience. I mean, every night, you know, you stay. You’d look at them and see what the resonant was with the punters in the seats and they’re singing along and everything.
It was quite emotional. You know, I thought at the end, well, this is the last time you’ll see us play live. It really was like goodbye. How did the songs go over?
Well, you know, obviously in America, they came to Roxy quite late in some ways. And because of the fact that the track More Than This was in a few films and stuff,
it was the one that you could see people singing, especially women, looking at Brian singing all the lyrics. I could feel at the time
There was no way of knowing For the leaves in the night Looking safe and growing
As free as the wind Oh, fully learning Why the sea on the tide
There’s no way to turn More than this You know there’s nothing
More than this Tell me one thing More than this
There’s nothing It was quiet
For a while There was no way of knowing Like a dream It said where we’re going
No caring No hope As the sea on the tide
There’s no way of turning The land
I personally enjoyed the early stuff a lot more. And actually, the early stuff was the chance for me,
and Annie, to really go off-piste and do some crazy, wacky kind of playing. And people were amazed because a lot of people have never seen that side of Roxy.
You know, they’ve seen a very smooth sort of side. And so they really loved it. Which song do you enjoy playing most?
Well, because I get to wig out, I enjoy Lady Tron. The end of Lady Tron. That is one where I just go bonkers, you know. And I always did. You know, me and Eno used to ham it up.
I think that is great. Obviously, playing the singles and seeing people sing along, and you know, we’d finish with the cover, you know, Jealous Guy, which was a big hit. And that was one very touching.
On many levels, you know. Great stuff.
I was dreaming of the past And my heart was feeling flat
I began to lose control I began to lose control
I didn’t mean to hurt you I’m sorry that I made you cry
I didn’t mean to hurt you I’m just a jealous child
I was feeling insecure You might not love me anymore
I was shivering inside I was shivering inside
I didn’t mean to hurt you I’m sorry that I made you cry
I didn’t mean to hurt you I’m just a jealous child
You finished with Jealous Guy, that was your encore? Yeah. Was everybody happy to wrap it up and go, job well done, fellas, thanks for 52 years?
Yeah, well, we knew that the main people, you know, at Bright Ferry, Andy Mackay, me, Paul Tolley, we knew that there’s business to be done still
for years, for the rest of our lives. And in fact, me, Andy and Paul started a new venture of what we originally said that the band was in 1972,
which was Avant Rock Group. So we embraced that original mission statement and started again. It could have been a disaster,
but it turned out to be fantastic. And we filmed it, recorded it as well. And in the light of what happened, we probably will next year do some gigs.
It’s impossible for me to describe what it is. And we brought out an album, actually, me and Andy, called AMPM. It’s fully instrumental. Fully instrumental, but all the critics,
it’s very difficult for them to review instruments. So it’s either you like it or you don’t like it. And then you take it from there. And it turns out they did like it. It turns out they liked it. Very much, yeah.
Is this the likely future for you, Phil Manzanero? There’s all sorts of projects that go with different people and exciting things. So I’m just continuing doing what he’s done.
Please, God, stay healthy and able to do it. After 52 years, you know, I’m making sense of it. But I just want to be happy. It doesn’t need to be the most famous, successful thing in the world.
I can just stay in my lane and juggle on. Fabulous. Well, Phil, congratulations on all your successes. And we can’t wait to see what comes out of you next. Well, kind of you to say that.
Thank you. Thank you for chatting with us today. OK, cheers. Roxy Music’s delightful and very talented Phil Manzanero there. Thanks for giving me your ear today.
I hope you’ve enjoyed and really got a lot out of hearing Phil’s stories. As always, I’ll be back with you again same time next week. I hope you’ll join me then. Bye now. It’s a beautiful day.
You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day. Oh, baby, any day that you’re gone away. It’s a beautiful day.